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DevOps engineers: the skills you’ll need to get ahead

As an engineer, you are acutely aware of one truth: you can never sit still. You have to improve your skills constantly and look to the next wave of technologies you’ll have to learn.

This is especially true for DevOps engineers. With an area as new and constantly changing as DevOps, you always have to be on your toes. With that in mind, we’ve pulled together two skills – one technical, one personal – to add to your repertoire today to make sure you stay on top of your game.

Know and understand your IT infrastructure.

DevOps engineers and developers can’t afford to guess how their applications might perform in their companies’ unique infrastructure. You need to be able to accurately predict and understand how each change you make will affect the performance of your environment.

Therefore, familiarize yourself with real-time feedback platforms like performance monitoring and optimization. Knowing your way around these tools will enable you to get the information you need in real-time, to know how the changes you make will perform in your overall environment.

Listen to, and give, accurate feedback.

DevOps relies on developers and operations professionals working together closely. For engineers who may be used to doing their own thing, developing features and letting operations worry about the effect on the IT infrastructure, this means changing the way you work.

You have to be willing to share the knowledge you have and learn from the knowledge operations provides. Of course, to be successful, the information you provide has to be accurate and up-to-date. This requires knowing how the features you develop will affect the environment.

The job of an engineer or developer is constantly changing. Those who don’t keep up with the changes won’t be engineers for long. For DevOps engineers, this is especially pressing. By following these two guidelines – and constantly being on the lookout for more – you can stay up with, and ahead of, that steep learning curve.

To learn more about our DevOps point of view, visit our CTO John Gentry’s predictions for 2017 post.